Berite seeks to parachute-in Sutherland for EU job

international | eu | news report Wednesday June 23, 2004 04:09 by Trot

Sutherland in line for EU top job

Peter Sutherland, the Irish chairman of BP and Goldman Sachs International, has become the latest name mooted as the next European Commission president.

Mr Sutherland, 58, announced on Tuesday that his name had been "floated among others" by Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister and holder of the European Union presidency.

Irish diplomats said neither Mr Sutherland nor any of his potential rivals had yet garnered enough support.

Names being talked about also include Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, the centre-right Portuguese prime minister, Pat Cox, the Irish president of the European parliament and Javier Solana, the Spanish EU foreign affairs chief.

Mr Ahern, in Tokyo on Tuesday for an EU-Japanese summit, is himself regarded as a possible runner and this week would only say he was not a candidate "at this stage".

He has pencilled in a mini-summit of EU leaders next Tuesday, on their way home from a Nato summit in Istanbul.

"There will be a meeting if the Taoiseach [prime minister] is confident of having a name that will command consensus," the official said.

The field is wide open after disagreement between member states at last week's EU summit in Brussels over who should succeed Romano Prodi when his term at the Commission, the EU executive, expires on October 31.

Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian prime minister, and Chris Patten, the British EU external relations commissioner, both withdrew after being blocked by rival camps at the summit. Mr Ahern will spend on Thursday and Friday speaking to fellow EU leaders in an effort to identify a candidate who could break the deadlock. Further talks are planned in the margins of next week's Nato summit.

Mr Ahern wants to resolve the issue before the Irish hand over the EU presidency to the Dutch on July 1.

Mr Sutherland, a former EU competition commissioner and former head of the World Trade Organisation, is now a successful businessman. His name was linked to the top Commission job in 1994, but he was not supported by the Irish government of the time.

"Nobody would consider accepting the job as Commission president, which is one of the most difficult jobs in the world, without a wholehearted and consensual decision by the European Council," he said on Tuesday.